Mental Magma

This week’s poll was a close 3-party race.  Alex, Greg, and Fuzz on the concept all had a chance to win, but at the closing bell Fuzz O.T.C. had the most votes.

We shan’t be surprised if Hallmark contacts Mr On The Concept and offers him a job.  The quip that earned him the win was:

Hoping all your hallucinations are harmless this Holiday Season!

F. on the C. will receive a $35 gift certificate to the MM online store.  Our MM Participation Rewards winner this week was Dana, who wins a $20 MM online store gift certificate (We doubled the amount to $20 in honor of contest 20).

This was a merch contest, so we’ll be making real cards out of some of these card ideas and selling them in our store.  We’ll try to have that done and announced in the next week so you can send them out as holiday cards.  Let us know if you have a favorite you’d really like to see make the cut (merch selections can be chosen from any entries, not just the finalists).

Jakutz is still on top, but Zabo is closing in on him.  The big movers this week were Lalaith and jupchu who both went from unranked to 7th & 8th respectively.  Alex also deserves some props for jumping 7 spots to take the #3 position.

1	Jakutz	45.5
2	Zabo	36.5
3	Alex	31.75
4	Greg	30.5
5	R.E.D.	23.25
6	SomeGuyNamedDoug	22
7	Lalaith	21.5
8	jupchu	18.75
9	Brendan	18.25
10	Mach3	17.5
11	fooly cooly	17.25
12	Bunny slippers	17
13	nmrboy	15.75
14	Iaoai	15.5
15	etmoose	15.25
16	Ian Randal Strock	14.5
17	Garrett	14.25
18	dlawhon	13.5
19	Tiago	13.25
20	Arkansas	12.5

Hallmark Shmallmark is right.  You guys rocked this week.  What can’t MM’ers do?  Compose classical music?  Beethoven Shmeethoven.

Given that we limit the finalists to the top five entries, each week we like to take the time to recognize some of the other outstanding submissions.  The following entries were either staff or crowd favorites: Etmoose’s terrifying traditions, Pennydreadful’s magic finger, Gig661’s birth control admonishment, pjmomof3boys Aunt Agnes, Etmoose‘s holiday car, Lisa‘s winter wonderland, R.E.D.’s drunken sot, Beverly‘s Goodwill jester, jupchu’s they’ll behave, SomeGuyNamedDoug’s unspeakable name, Arkansas‘ handkerchief boob job, cgomez‘s nativity scene, erumpleton‘s Hasslehoff cover, Taylor‘s chloroform,

As we close another chapter in the saga of the Mischievous Time Traveler, I wonder what the story behind the mischief is.  Is she working for a shadow organization or is she operating solo?  What’s her obsession with pantsing?  And where (and when) will we see her again?  We’ll have to content ourselves with her latest chaos-inducing operation, authored by Soleil, the change to the bill of rights:

Second Amendment – Right to keep and arm bears.

A grizzly (ha!) alteration to American history indeed.  Soleil takes home a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate.  In a moment of prescience, Soleil predicted his own win last week after winning last week’s participation reward.  What’s next for Soleil, the title of first 2x MM champion?

The randomly chosen winner of this week’s MM participation reward is Stevel Knievel.  Stevel earned eligibility by voting while logged in on this week’s contest and making a comment (which was quite useful) on the Contest #19 post.

This week the MM Mob showed that they only need a single word change to able to cause mayhem, mischief, high jinks, and last but not least, tomfoolery.

We have several extra entries to mention this week.  These were all entries that, despite missing the finals, were either crowd or staff favorites.  These included Silent Tuba’s right to keep bear arms, fuzz on the concept’s right to keep koala bears, Lalaith’s civil trial by fire, pennydreadful’s due process for zombies, erumpeltin’s right to bear Chuck Norris, and Alex’s powers reserved to the Fonz.

Whatever you do in life, do not mess with either Amueth or Snoconegrl.  They each have enormous posses, and they will mess you up.  I infer this from the fact that they each received more votes than the average of total votes in a normal poll.

Maybe it’s just that people were already in vote mode as this week was historic, not simply because of MM’s first photo contest but also because America elected its darkest-skinned president yet (Bill Clinton was, of course, our first black president).

When the voting deadline passed, the chads stopped hanging, and the Diebold guy finished monkeying with the voting machine, user Ameuth came out on top by a single vote.

Ameuth wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com and will be remembered forever in songs of Mental Magma as Lord of the Photo Contests.

We’ve moved into a new world now that we’ve started hosting photo contests.  Despite my love for our writing-based contests, the web is really made for photos. Plus, it’s fun to get to see our users.  We’ve worked some bugs out and are ready to go for future photo-based competitions.

There won’t be any special mentions for this week, so let’s go straight to your five finalists.  The five most creative costumes were Snoconegrl’s Bob Ross, amueth’s Rorschach (from The Watchmen), Lalaith’s flying purple people eater, Jakutz‘ high tide, and Mach3’s Alex Trebek.

The polls will be open until 5pm EST on Thursday.  Remember, there’s a sweet $50 Amazon.com gift certificate riding on this as well as the title: winner of the first MM photo contest.

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This week I will begin the winner announcement post with no preamble (other than this no-preamble announcement).

The winner of contest #18 and the person whose cup of fakelore runneth over with creativity is Alex. Soon the Internet will be filled be people chiding each other for not knowing the real story behind Hansel and Gretel.  See the full text of Alex’s answer here.

The winner of the the MM participation reward this week is Soleil. We’re giving him a $10 credit for the MM Online Store.  Remember, you can be eligible for the participation reward just by voting in the finalist poll (while logged in) and participating one other way on MM (see the above link for details on MM participation rewards eligibility).

We hope to see every back here soon for a political filled week.

This week’s contest was ambitious.  Some said we were Icarus flying too close to the sun.  I think we proved that, no matter how formidable a contest is, the MM mob will rise to the occasion.

Now that we have our pool of entries, we have to decide which author composed the best fakelore and which fakelore we want to spread around the internet (possibly, but not necessarily, the same entry).

We just have a few extra people to mention this week, but I’d like to thank everyone who competed.  Staff or fan favorites included Billard’s Jacqueline Dowell, Garrett’s Uncle Jack (and S.G.N.Doug’s Uncle Jack song), greg’s night before All Saints Day, and Mach3’s sobering-perspective-lore, (as named by giraffe1089).

The five fakelore finalists this week are Ian Randal Strock (with his dentist-engineered Halloween), jupchu’s kin of pumps, Barnaby Hayes’ regifting Santa, Tiago’s mad arab Al-o-ween, and Alex’s more macabre Hansel & Gretel.

I’m glad that we have so many close finalist polls here at MM.  That probably means that all of you have as much trouble as I do when trying to figure out which entry is the best.

The 17th member of the exclusive MM Champions Club is Lalaith.  The number 17 is indivisible (you know, mostly) and her answer was invincible.  Should you find yourself in medieval Britain pitching bumper sticker ideas, remember Lalaith’s brainchild:

I ♥ York

The winner of the the MM participation reward this week is Greg.  We’re giving him a $10 credit for the MM Online Store.  

Next week is going to be an unprecedented one for MM.  We’ll be having 2 contests;  a standard contest will be announced tomorrow and then the Halloween photo contest (with further rules description) will be announced later in the week.  Prime your minds for the workout.

In the very early days of MM, we were on easy street when whittling down the entries into five finalists.  Usually there would only be about five that were really standouts anyway.  This is a stark contrast to recent contests, which have taken a herculean effort to narrow the field down.

With an increasing number of people showing off their prodigious contest skills, it increases the pool of entries that are in the category amazing-yet-not-chosen-for-the-finals.  Some good news is that we’ve decided this will be a merch contest.  We’ll announce our selections for those in a few weeks.

Behold!

1	Jakutz	42
2	Greg	27
3	Zabo	26
4	Fooly Cooly	23
5	Bunny Slippers	21
6	SomeGuyNamedDoug	20.5
7	Brendan	20
8	nmrboy	17.5
9	R.E.D.	16.5
10	Alex	15
11	Mrs. Sara	14.5
12/13	Vlad	14
12/13	Sherry Baker	14
14	Ian Randal Strock	12
15	c2	11.5
16/17	Padma	10.5
16/17	dlawhon	10.5
18	Shiradee	8
19	Mrs. Sanchez	7.5
20	Mach3	7

Not to steal any thunder from our finalists and contest winner, but how about our new winner logo here?  It’s so shiny & sophisticated; I feel like I should avert my eyes.

The vote totals were tight between our finalists this week, but when five o’clock came, nmrboy stood atop the heap.  Should you be the recipient of a colossal check that you’re nervous about cashing, just look the teller in the face and say:

The sultan of brunei’s left eye twitches when he’s bluffing.

The winner of our MM participation rewards this week is Taylor.  He will receive a $10 gift certificate to the MM online store.  He was eligible for the prize just by voting in the finals (while logged in) and participating in this week’s game.

Thanks to everyone who participated this week.  Be sure to return tomorrow when we announce contest #17 and news about our first photo contest.

This week we learned that Short Round has some strong support, that you thought Contest #16 was a good break from our more complicated contests, and that Jakutz is actually all but 3 of the people on MM.

I’m happy to report that we had a bunch of new people enter the contest this week, some of which made the special-mentions and the finalists.  In addition to lauding the finalists, each week, we also mention entries that didn’t make the top 5, but were either crowd or staff favorites.

There were Greg’s menial magnifier blogy-thingy, Alex’s cash only gas station, David’s one-man China, Taylor’s swear jar, Gig’s bailout bucket, Misha G’s Ethiopian baby adoptions, Katie’s superstring theory, and jbirdpower’s Pac-man goal.

Many weeks on Mental Magma the 1st place and 2nd place vote totals are different by 1 vote.  This was not one of those weeks.  I intend no disrespect to the other finalists when I say that Etmoose continued his impressive debut on MM with a Kim Jong Il-esque sweep of the votes.

In addition to the main contest win, you can be sure you’ll be seeing this Star Wars PSA on youtube soon:

[We see Leia in the golden bikini, chained to Jabba the Hutt. Cut to Luke cornered by the Rancor. Cut to Darth Vader, standing back to the camera, looking out a window into space.] 
Narrator: It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?